Bancomat, Bizum, EPI Company/Wero, SIBS-MB WAY and Vipps MobilePay today announced the creation of a new joint entity “European Network for Payments”, dedicated to operating and scaling interoperability between participating European payment solutions.
[…]
The role of the newly established entity is to connect existing European payment solutions through a common technical and operational layer based on European standards, including instant account-to-account payments. The founding partners will be equal shareholders of the entity, which will oversee technical coordination and future expansion of both functionalities and participating solutions. The framework may also accommodate other established European payment solutions over time, subject to the partners’ agreement and the technical and operational requirements of the network.
[…]
As an Italian there’s a thing I don’t understand: Bancomat is both a very well known card circuit (like CB in France) and a virtually unknown and unused payment app. From what I know, all the other parties are payment apps. Do they want to handle POS payments only as app payments or are we going to create an European card circuit? That would be nice!
They seem to create a European payment ecosystem for all use cases imo. As the article says,
My understanding is that they are also open for future members in the alliance.